Why is my GPU power usage randomly dropping

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Daniel Thomas

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Jul 27, 2015
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I know when gaming your GPU power usage should always be at 99%, but I don't get why my power is randomly dropping from 99%, then randomly hangs around the 60's, and drops to the 40's, and then goes back up to the 90's. This is resulting in low FPS at very random times. It's not any specific game this happens in all of the games I play, what could it be?

Here is my hardware:

GPU: Nvidia GTX 950
CPU: AMD A10 7870K
PSU: EVGA 500W 80+ plus certified
MOBO: ASUS A68HM-E FM2+mATX AMD Motherboard
 
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One possibility is there is a CPU bottleneck at those times. I can't think of another reason ATM.

It's rather difficult to say, though you may want to run something like Unigine Valley and see if you get GPU dropping there which you should NOT get.

The FPS will change, especially between scenes however the GPU load should stay close to 100%. (do not use frequency as a guide, use GPU performance with whatever utility you find is good. If you get a SUDDEN low FPS then you should see the GPU load drop and that should NOT happen in this demo... there should be no sudden CPU bottleneck unless some other program is kicking in to use CPU cycles)
 
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Ok, I guess I could try that. If the GPU isn't the case though would overclocking the CPU help? I have an aftermarket cooler, and I've experimented, but I don't seem to see a difference. Should I raise voltage maybe?
 
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Overclocking the CPU only helps if it's a CPU bottleneck during those times and frankly I just don't know. You can also run Task Manager in the background (Performance-> CPU-> show all four graphs) then if you get sudden drops for no obvious reason you can alt-tab out and see if any of the cores hit 100%. It's not a perfect way to do this but I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Overclocking the CPU can at best improve the FPS by the amount you overclock it though. So if you dropped to 20FPS then a 10% overclock might get you 22FPS instead.

Frankly, I don't know if you have an issue or not. I get frequent FPS drops in different games. That's common, though I've never verified the actual reasons since I know my system is setup right so it's just the game itself. It's a CPU or GPU bottleneck and there's nothing I can do other than dropping the quality settings (some affect the CPU more, and some affect the GPU more).

Most settings affect the GPU more.

*note that MMO's are more prone than most games to frequent CPU bottlenecks. Fallout 4 probably has frequent CPU bottlenecks too. A game like TOMB RAIDER on the other hand should rarely have CPU issues since it's very graphically oriented.

Starcraft 2 is one of the worst-case scenarios for CPU bottlenecking. When you get larger battles the CPU has to calculate exchanges for an increasing number of units which ends up bottlenecking any CPU. You usually toggle between a GPU bottleneck, then switch to a CPU bottleneck. The weaker the CPU the more often you will see a CPU bottleneck (during heavy exchanges a weaker CPU may drop below 10FPS).
 
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if the GPU is somehow defective and forcing a lower frequency I'm not sure how to verify that other than test a different video card with similar (or better) specs (NVidia only as AMD DX11 drivers use more CPU cycles)

If you overclocked the GPU, put it back to the settings it originally came with.

I doubt this will help but try anyway:
1) download latest driver from NVidia
2) start install then choose "custom-> Clean" install path

Other:
a) you should have 8GB of DDR3 memory or more (at 4GB you may max out the system memory thus force swapping to the game HDD or SSD)

b) update BIOS to latest (v1403)

c) Memtest86 for a full pass www.memtest86.com (should not be directly behind your FPS issue)

d) make sure there is no WEB BROWSER open, and CPU isn't using much more than 10% (Task Manager) when loading the game. Again, you can alt-tab out and see if any of the cores get a big speak to 100% at the time of the big FPS drop

e) verify at least 3GB available in system memory for most games (Skyrim for me maxed at 1.75GB but some use over 3GB)

f) reinstalling Windows would be a last resort. If you don't have Windows 10 then I'd do that anyway. When I jumped from W7 to W8.1 I got an improvement due to CPU management in a couple games. On average there's little difference between W7/8/10 for gaming performance.

There could be however some software issue that is fixed by a clean OS install.

You likely have STEAM and note that you can reinstall it without redownloading all your games:
- keep the STEAMAPPS folder (so need at least two partitions on same drive or more than one drive)
- save Documents folder (to copy games save over for those with no CLOUD support), write down programs to reinstall, copy any passwords etc.
- W10 install media (MS media creation tool.. google for site and create DVD or USB if you have no W10 installation media)

- shut down, and unhook non-OS drives
- make sure BIOS is using UEFI (not compatibility/legacy settings)
- start W10 install

- DELETE everything so drive is blank if it was not partitioned
- when prompted for a key SKIP that
- finish all Microsoft Updates (Start-> Settings-> update.. let finish updates)

- install latest NVidia driver even if W10 appeared to install it
- install Steam to C-drive (ignore other programs until test)
- if you use a different drive use that folder (see Steam library settings... such as E:\Steam2), though the main Steam installation should be the OS drive even if you run no games on that drive

- sign in, then MOVE your Steamapps folder to replace the one in the new folder, reboot
- verify a game's local content then run it. (single player is more consistent to test than multiplayer, and preferably one with frequent stutter normally)
- test it and several other games and benchmarks

- finish install of other programs, setup fan profile if applicable etc

 
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I ran Unigine Valley, and I didn't get any sudden FPS drops. The load would tend to stay around the 90's, but once or twice it dropped to the 70's (I'm guessing because these were during non intensive areas. The CPU never kicked in to bottleneck the GPU, so I guess my GPU is fine then.
 
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I don't know what is going on, but now every game is hit 100% CPU usage most of the time. It wasn't even doing that yesterday. I overclocked the CPU, and now somehow its gotten worse? That doesn't even make any sense, I tried Mirrors Edge Catalyst, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, and Battlefield hardline all gave me the same results.
 
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Will underclocking the GPU fix the CPU bottleneck? Or alternatively how far do I have to overclock the CPU to eliminate the bottleneck. Currently my clocks are sitting at the 4.1Ghz range. Since I have an aftermarket cooler can I go higher than that?

*Update* I watched a video of a guy running the same GPU I have, but with a weak AMD APU, and he had now issue playing BF4 at all. I just don't get it, what is causing these drops in power?
 
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I think I figured out what was happening. I turned off Nvidia Shadowplay Instant Replay ability, and then I noticed that these drops went away in all the games I've been playing. I don't know why this is happening, I've never had this issue before, but I might be a driver issue. I'll have to do more testing, but I'm sure that is what the issue was.
 
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